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The original was posted on /r/scams by /u/schizophrenicDEV on 2024-09-26 13:54:33+00:00.

I’ll be withholding the names of the business so they don’t appear on Google for this post and become associated with the scam, since they’re a victim as well.

Yesterday I noticed an unknown credit card transaction on my bank app. This was a $40 payment to a small business in Texas that sells a special stain remover. I googled around and found their website. It all looked legit, just a small business selling a product.

I contacted their support email to confirm I (or my wife) didn’t actually make this purchase and confirm my card actually was stolen. I provided my name, last 4 digits of the credit card number, the card type (Visa) and my card’s billing address. They promptly responded with all of the information they had on the order, including the shipping address and the associated email and phone number, as well as the billing info.

The billing info was my name and billing address, while the shipping address was to a girl I’ll call “Kelly” in Ohio (not my state). The email was for a long proper Vietnamese name with some numbers at gmail and the phone number was for a phone number in Michigan. This obviously confirmed that my card was stolen. The company canceled the order and immediately refunded my card and contacted FedEx to hold the package (which they had already shipped).

The whole situation was weird, so I continued digging. I found “Kelly” on Facebook and sent her a message, which was a sort of weird thing to do, but whatever. She responded a few hours later saying that she actually did order this stain remover product yesterday, but using Amazon, not the company’s direct website. This is notable because my credit card was charged by the official website, not Amazon. She then sent me a screenshot of the order on her Amazon.

I quickly noticed that she had purchased from an “unofficial” seller. One of the sellers that would appear on a product page under the “Buy New from these sellers” link on Amazon. This seller was undercutting the official Amazon product listing by about $8 with free shipping. She saw the good deal and purchased through them. Looking at the account, they are selling a couple of different “boutique” products like small brand lotions and a lot of this stain remover company’s various products.

Using this information, I was able to figure out how the “scam” works. The bad actor finds listings on Amazon that are fulfilled directly by the manufacturer, not Amazon, and also have a website you can purchase through directly. They then create an Amazon seller profile and list that company’s items and undercut them. When people purchase from them, the bad actor uses stolen credit card credentials (in this case, mine) to make the order on the manufacturer’s official website and have it shipped to the person who ordered from them on Amazon (in this case, Kelly). Then the bad actor pockets the money from Amazon.

This is actually quite a good operation, because normal people (not me) would either not notice the transaction on their statement or would just cancel the card and have the transaction reversed. The manufacturer would maybe receive a chargeback, but wouldn’t have any additional information to go off of. The legitimate customer (Kelly) would receive her product. Nothing really traces back to this illegitimate Amazon account.

I’ve passed all this information along to the stain remover company as well as other companies that have their products listed to be sold by this scammer Amazon seller. The stain remover company was VERY appreciative for the info and is working with Amazon to have this resolved.

I just figured I would pass info this along. If this is a novel scam technique it’s good to get this info out there and if not I would love to read more about it. I like to keep up-to-date on scams like this and read about the methods used by scammers and haven’t seen this specific flavor of scam before.